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ElDuderino44137 writes "Hey, kids, got the summer blues? The CIA isn't the only one with a kids' page to keep you busy. The Centers for Disease Control have the full set of collectible infectious disease trading cards. Mix 'em, match 'em, trade 'em, recoil in abject horror from 'em."

More or less. The Black Death wiped out one-third to one-half of [any given European / West Asian / Middle Eastern geographical area], with the exceptions of Poland and Scotland, which didn't get touched.

Something to tell the next kid you find singing "ring around the rosey," a nursery rhyme about the Plague.:-)

Up until the end where a folklorist is quoted, it's extremely speculative, basing almost all its evidence on the fact that the rhyme didn't appear in print until the 1880s. Arguing over the year claimed by an urban legend (or at least the version that they chose to knock down) is pretty pedantic and poorly thought out in this case.

For example, it's much easier to make light of a plague that happened 2 centuries earlier, just as many of th

Heh, I got you one better. One sociology class of mine had a required text on call at the library called "Sex in the Snow" (actual book, check it out on Amazon). We were forbidden by the prof to ask the librarians, "Do you have Sex in the Snow" or "Can I have Sex in the Snow" or "Can I check out Sex in the Snow" or any such variation. Turned out there was no bloody way of asking for the book without just writing down the call number.

And did you know that it is not know for certain that "The Black Death" even was bubonic plague? Scientisits and historians now assume that the epidemic that swept through Europe was that disease, but since European medicine at the time was, shall we say, non-scientific, it is impossible to know with certainty what the diease really was. I believe (no, I can't cite any sources) that there are problems in the hisotical record with the bubonic plague theory, and even some other contenders for the actual cau

not all deaths attributed to the Black Death were from yersinia pestis, no argument there. With people dying in droves, almost any death at that time was attributed to The Black Death.

As for a hemorragic fever being responsible, it is of course possible but highly unlikely. It would have to be an extremely exotic fever as no known hemo fever can survive through the cold european winter.

Europe also was coming out of a time of extreme famine just prior to the onset of the Black Death, so its likely that many individuals were chronically malnourished with weakened immune systems. So, it wouldn't take anything more exotic than a foreign plague bacillus to really wreak havoc.

PBS did a Secrets of the Dead on the 1918 flu, and they tied it directly to WWI. In war, it is not only that you have people shooting at each other; you also take a lot of people and place them (cram them into) camps and place them under stresses to challenge their immune systems.

The hypothesis is that a British camp in France had a lot of soldiers in close proximity to a lot of pigs (needed to feed that many soldiers), allowing a swine flu virus to cross over to the soldiers, and then you had the soldie

Pestilance retired after WWII, muttering something about "penicillin". He has since been replaced by Pollution. Famine's latest endeavor is diet fads. You can starve to death at a table full of low-carb, sugar-free, no-calorie goodness.

fast google search will render you:this [guardian.co.uk], and this [theanswerbank.co.uk]

The true nature of the "Black Death" was long a mystery, but early in the 20th Century, after doctors had found and described bubonic plague in India, experts jumped to the conclusion that a more virulent form of that disease, endemic in rats and transmitted to humans by their fleas, was the real culprit.This was a comforting conclusion, because it meant it was a bacterial disease with a complicated life cycle, easily contained by hygiene and antibiotics

not exactly. it IS certain that it was bubonic, pneumonic, and setecemic plague. However, what is not certain is that EVERY death was caused by plague. Many people who died of other infections or reasons were categorized under the Black Death, but they did not actually die of plague. The overwhelming majority were caused by bubonic plague.

Actually, the mistake is classifying the black plague as bubonic plague. (a very common misconception because of what they have taught us in schools)I saw a program where they explained why the black plague of late middle ages couldn't have been the bubonic plague.The black plague simptoms and "modus operandi" was far more related to the haemorrhagic plague than bubonic plague.A fast google search rendered these items:Black Death blamed on man, not rats [guardian.co.uk] Bubonic plague didn't cause the Black Death [theanswerbank.co.uk] But im

that second link tries to say it wasnt plague, but pretty much ends up saying it was -- they say the symptoms COULD be from plague but MIGHT not have been. And its been well documented that plague can EASILY spread from human to human, especially in pneumonic form. And plague infection could display symptoms very similar to hemo fever in septecemic form. bubonic plague is one type of infection from yersinia pestis. Pneumonic is a different one (lungs) and septecemic is the third (blood) -- septecemic has be

even i didnt like that much the second link, mostly because it told something about an american university, and i knew it wasn't an american discovery...so i looked further, and here you go:google [google.com] all you want

Most convincing argument: the only sucessfull thing against the black plague was quarentine (has proven in the pope's (living in frace at the time) and venezian records.Rats dont respect quarentines do they?

rats don't respect quarantines, but depending on how a quarantine is carried out, it might also keep the rats out too. If that's the most convincing argument though, that's pretty sad. I'm not even sure what that "most convincing" item means...if it wasn't plague, quarantine works, but if it was plague, quarantine shouldn't have worked because rats dont respect it? A little sketchy, since it technically wasn't even the rats, it was the fleas. Also, early on in plague outbreak m

I don't get their criteria for giving out the cards. Some major-league diseases are missing like tuberculosis and cholera, but they give some small-time (yeah yeah it's not small if you've got it) diseases their own card. Damnit, I want a 1918 influenza [stanford.edu] card! It killed millions worldwide--a very pricey card I'm sure.

I think this would have given me nightmares when I was a kid (check out page 2, with the thick white membrane in the throat of the Diptheria sufferer, or the backwards-bent leg of the Polio girl)... but I think the helpful translations of scientific words would have made up for it. This snippet (from the Cyclosporiasis blurb) is a fine example:

You may get this disease from eating food or swallowing water that has been contaminated with feces

(poop). About a week after you get this parasite, you may start to feel sick and have diarrhea.

Yeah, I'm sure the kid knows what "contaminated" means... come on, guys. Though I will forgive them not trying to explain "diarrhea" using small words.

"you can get crypto by putting in your mouth food or water that has come into contact with feces (poop)"

what they're leaving out is the "or by working in a lab where a co-worker accidentally ordered viable oocysts rather than inactivated ones for his studies". Getting crypto is absolutely no fun. But it's nice to see that I've experienced 4 of the cards there (crypto, vaccines, chickenpox, and ulcer). not sure how many of the others i'm willing to try out.

Children quickly become fascinated with things that are a part (and sometimes a horrible part) of their lives. One could say that the purpose for children is to go forth and gather diseases from schools so that they might infect their parents. And so do adults, as in the case of the Black Death and the pandemics of bubonic plague that swept Europe.

A prime case of this type of fascination is in the art of the time, such as that of Hieronymus Bosch [floridaimaging.com] and others who began drawing images of intense suffering and disease.

The death caused by these pandemics may also be seen as beneficent, as it gave rise to increased rights for the peasantry, the creation of a "middle class" and the concept of general human rights, which lead to the end of the feudal system of governments. The nobility could no longer compel peasants to work their land just for their protection and the peasantry demanded actual pay for work.

This also gave rise to the general usage of sirnames that stuck throughout generations, as the kings would tax their noblemen on the basis of the potential in numbers of persons on their lands, instead of only on the size of their holdings. When the kings revenue collectors were faced with seventeen "Johns" they would assign names to them on basis of their employment, where they lived, or how they looked instead of who their father or master was.

One can usually find the etymology of one's sirname in the common tongue of this period.

The content of these PDF's is just two bitmaps set at 100 DPI.
There is no selectabe text, the bitmap text is too small.
If I flatten the whole thing and save it out as JPG I get a file 1/3 to 1/4 the size.
WTF?

I found this game [rpgshop.com] (Black Death) some years ago. If I recall correctly it started out as a simulation of how disease spreads. It was turned into a game and every once in a while I whip it out to horrify my more 'sensible' friends. Great fun, well worth the $10 I spent a decade ago.